At first there was laughter amongst the Roman nobles when they heard of this proclamation. ‘If the fool provokes me further,’ exclaimed Stephen Colonna, the head of that powerful clan, ‘I will throw him from the Capitol’; but his contempt was turned to dismay when he heard that a citizen army was guarding the bridges, and confining the aristocratic families to their houses. In the end Stephen fled to his country estates, while the younger members of his household came to terms with the Tribune, and swore allegiance to the new Republic. Rienzi was now triumphant, and his letters to all the rulers of Europe announced that Rome had found peace and law, while he exhorted the other cities of Italy to throw off the yoke of tyrants and join a ‘national brotherhood’. It would seem that Rienzi alone of his contemporaries saw a vision of a united Italy; but unfortunately the common sense and balance that are necessary to secure the practical realization of a visionary’s dreams were lacking. The Tribune was undoubtedly great, but not great enough to stand success. The child of peasants, he began to boast that he was really a son of the Emperor Henry VII, and the pageantry that he had first employed to dazzle the Romans grew more and more elaborate as he himself became ensnared by a false sense of his own dignity. Clad in a toga of white silk edged with a golden fringe, he would ride through the streets on a white horse, amid a cavalcade of horsemen splendidly equipped. In order to celebrate his accession to power he instituted a festival, where, amid scenes of lavish pomp, he was knighted in the Lateran with a golden girdle and spurs, after bathing in the porphyry font in which tradition declared that Constantine had been cleansed from leprosy. The people, as is the way with crowds, clapped their hands and shouted while the trumpets blew, and they scrambled for the gold Rienzi’s servants threw broadcast; but long afterwards, when they had forgotten the even-handed justice their Tribune had secured them, they remembered his foolish extravagance and display, and resented the taxes that he found it necessary to impose in order to maintain his government and state. The history of Rienzi’s later years is a tale of brilliant opportunities, created in the first place by his genius, and then lost by his timidity or lack of balance. On one occasion, when he learned that the very nobles who had sworn on oath to uphold his constitution were plotting its overthrow, he invited the leaders of the conspiracy to a banquet, arrested them, and sent them under guard to prison. The next morning the prison-bell tolled, and the nobles within were led out apparently to the death their treachery had richly deserved. At the last moment, however, when each had given up hope, the Tribune came before the scaffold, and, after a sermon on the forgiveness of sins, ordered those who were condemned to be set free.